“There’s not that relationship between us at all,” said Joyo stiffly. “We’re friends.”
“—Liar,” commented Dr. Steiner inwardly.
“I know what you’re thinking,” went on Joyo. “With Marion away, what about me? How would I get on?” She leaned forward. “But that’s the point. I’d be all right. I’d stay, you see. I’d look after things for her.”
Thinking of Marion’s affairs in those muddled hands, he asked: “How about you taking a holiday?”
“Not for me,” said Joyo. “I’ve had them, and never again. I’m never going away again. Let her go.”
For a moment her eyes wandered round the room. It was a pleasant if inexpensive room and contained many of his little treasures. “He was done in with a knife, you know,” she said with apparent inconsequence. “No one knows where it came from, either. I suppose you’d have lots of knives around, you being a doctor?”
“I am a physician not a surgeon,” he said stiffly, but he knew a threat when he heard one. There could be nothing in it, he knew there could not. But supposing she endangered his precious little world? Oh God, he told himself, you should steer clear of neurotics, that’s the thing about them: they ruin other people’s lives besides their own. In that moment he could almost have killed Joyo.
Joyo changed the subject. “You think you know all about Dr. Manning, don’t you?”
It was a preposterous question and he answered it coldly: “I only know what she has told me.”
Joyo ignored that. She lowered her voice and leaned forward confidentially, “Supposing I told you that there had been a child?”
“My first reaction would be to say this was an untruth,” he said phrasing his words with care. He did not wish to alienate this creature. “I would say that it was not true and could not be true.” But he grasped that Joyo believed it to be true, believed that Marion had borne a child without her knowing. This belief could explain the monstrous degeneration of their relationship; it could explain Joyo’s state of mind, which was getting closer and closer to hatred of Marion. It could not, of course, explain Joyo.
For a second he toyed with the amazing thought that the suggestion might be true. He knew that patients could suppress incredible parts of their lives; the good doctor was never surprised.
“If there was a child,” said Joyo, speaking carefully in her turn, “born after the father got killed, a posthumous child, then he could be a young man going about Oxford now.”
“I see you have settled the sex of the child,” pointed out Dr. Steiner.
“Boy or girl,” amended Joyo irritably. “It doesn’t matter. But it would explain such a lot.” What she meant was that it would explain why she, in spite of her scorn for Marion, yet always felt inferior to her. She did not respect Marion’s intellectual achievements, she did not respect her moral standards, but deny it how she would she did respect Marion. And there had to be a reason for it.
“It would not explain why she kept it secret.”
“Oh you don’t have to have explanations from Marion. She’s crackers. We all know that.”
The enormity, as well as the simplicity, struck Dr. Steiner, but he was strangely touched. “Poor soul,” he thought, “poor soul.”
She soon dispelled this softer emotion. “Don’t you think it would be best all round to send Marion away on a long rest. I know you can fix it.” Her round face was earnest and apparently well-intentioned. “I’m not thinking of myself.”
“You wouldn’t have much money, would you, when Marion went away?”
“I’d get a job,” she smiled at him. “You wouldn’t like a house-keeper yourself?”
Dr. Steiner grew cold at the suggestion. Was this then what she had been leading up to all along? Joyo in his flat, perpetually there, part of his carefully hoarded and enjoyed life? It was a terrible suggestion. Then he saw she was joking. He hoped it was all joke. Though to be sure, he would have a certain power over Joyo.
“I am my own house-keeper,” he said.
“I like you, Doc,” she said, as she prepared to go. “And I tell you what, so does Marion.” She gave an awful wink.
This time the doctor felt the nerves of his own heart twitch and contract. Joyo could convey so much in an idle phrase. After she had gone he went to the mirror and studied his face.
Could he see there the anxious eyes, the pale lined face which had distinguished the dead man? Were they then the same type? Sadly he concluded this was so.
He recognised that perhaps he had misunderstood Marion’s interest in him from the first. She had not been all that disinterested.
Now he was frightened of Marion, too.
A wave of nausea seized him. He felt sick. He had an ulcer. Or was it something more malignant? He felt very sick indeed.
“I must get away,” he moaned.
Dr. Steiner would have been even more frightened if he had known what Joyo had in mind. Her appearance in his consulting room, although it had been extremely satisfying to her and had, as she put it to herself, ‘gingered him up’, had only been a first appearance. She meant to call again. More than once, if she could get in. She did indeed like the doctor, and she knew Marion did, too, but when she next called, she hoped not to find him there. She wanted a quiet time alone in his office. On her call this afternoon she had been carefully noticing where everything was kept, and she had promised herself a splendid time going through his case-records. Not, she assured herself, out of plain nosiness, although she would certainly take the chance of checking up on the exact age of the nasty woman assistant in the grocery store, and on the real cause of the illness of the woman next door but one; but because she wanted to confirm her belief that Marion had borne a child.
By now she had convinced herself that she had heard this somewhere on good authority and if she could only remember exactly who had told her or where, then she would know. Know was written in great capitals in Joyo’s mind and was luminous with meaning. She had for a short time wondered if Ezra was the child in question, but then she decided he was too old. “Too long in the tooth,” she had put it vulgarly; a judgement which would have depressed Ezra who prided himself on his young look.
Ezra was shopping at the time when Joyo was calling on the doctor. Joyo was not entirely without justification in what she had wondered about Ezra because he did indeed have a forlorn, unmothered look about him as if he had never known his mother; this was true, he had been told that she had died when he was born and he never thought about it. Had she existed in this world he would certainly have expected to have recognised her at once, to have seen in her features a reflection of his features, in her voice an echo of his voice, to feel the pull of the blood relationship. There was nothing of this feeling with Marion, but perhaps it had been a lack in him which had attracted him to Marion, not for her motherliness, but for a protectiveness which she was ready to assume and which he had missed in his life. It was possibly this want which bedevilled his relations with Rachel. Unconsciously he demanded much from her.
But Ezra as he shopped was not thinking of Rachel, or Marion, or his mother, or even, for once, of himself. He was thinking about the police. He had noted their behaviour at the inquest and he also had guessed that they knew more than they were prepared to say. He was perturbed about Marion; he had watched her at the inquest with surprised eyes, and instead of admiring her composure, as he might have done, it had only made him cross. He was anxious, Rachel was anxious, so Marion ought to be anxious too. What was more, her indifference to her own plight was downright stupid. Marion ought to care.
He fingered the socks he was buying and matched them up to his tie. “Not my colour,” he murmured regretfully. “Got any more?” The assistant produced blood-red nylon and at once Ezra’s fluent imagination saw the red of a judge’s gown and Marion in the dock. “I won’t take the socks,” he said, and walked from the shop.
He could see Marion standing there, or did they give the accused person a chair? Anyway he could see
her, and himself, as a witness. He would not be far away, for English courts were so small, so cosy, so intimate that you could see the whites of the prisoner’s eyes.
Would it be the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey as it was often called, or the Oxford Assizes? The Oxford Assizes probably. He had once seen the Assize Judge leaving the Judge’s Lodgings in St. Giles; he had watched him walk across the pavement to the car followed by his Marshal and saluted by the policeman on duty; at the gutter the old man had stumbled and Ezra, who was near, had gripped his arm to steady him before being waved away by the Marshal. The car had driven off, and Ezra had been left with the impression that the arm of English law was thin and frail. That week the old man had awarded in a polite sub-acid tone sentences of sharp severity to three louts who had beaten up an old postmaster, sentenced a baby cruelty case to what amounted to life imprisonment and condemned a man to death. The arm might be frail, but it was working.
Was Marion now to be subject to it? Ezra had noticed something at the inquest that Dr. Steiner had missed. The Coroner’s Jury had returned an open verdict of murder by person or persons unknown. The Foreman of the jury, an intelligent and kindly Oxford tradesman, was known to Ezra, so he had observed him more closely than he might otherwise have done. He had seen the man’s face as Marion gave her evidence (and very badly, too). He had also seen a note passed from the Foreman to the Coroner and back again, he had seen the look of worry on the Foreman’s face. He mentioned all this to a lawyer friend. “Oh I suppose he was afraid that they might have to bring in against the woman. Coroner’s Juries hate to indict a woman,” responded his friend. “It’s a known thing. Just like Welsh juries won’t convict a woman on a capital charge. But the police were glad to have it left open, you see. Got to get the evidence tidy.” Ezra absorbed this in all its implications. “I notice you say ‘woman’. You think she’s guilty?” “Well, isn’t she?” responded his friend easily.
It seemed to Ezra that Marion was already condemned. It was difficult to believe her guilty and yet difficult to believe her innocent either.
Ezra’s features drooped, unconsciously he took on the expression of Marion. Perhaps he was like a little dog which has lived too long with one master and they have grown alike.
Nothing could have been more discreet than Joyo as she crept into the ground-floor surgery belonging to Dr. Steiner. She had just missed meeting a policeman, and although she had every faith in her ability to win over even an Oxford policeman used to the capers of undergraduates, she did not wish to bother. In her black coat and skirt with her hair tidy and not too much lipstick she could have been anyone, even the tutor of a women’s college. She looked kindly and she certainly looked respectable. No policeman would worry about her even if he saw her climbing through the ground-floor window. She could always say she had lost her key. He would probably help her in. She had rehearsed what she would say if the policeman appeared again: “Oh, constable, do give me a hand, I’ve stupidly left my key in my other bag,” and provided he did not smell the breath of Bird and Baby brandy, there she would be, inside.
She dropped through the window and dusted her hands which had got grubby in their struggle with the catch. She didn’t rub the dirt off very thoroughly, so that she left a trail of grubby little marks wherever she touched anything. In the half light she could not see this.
She grabbed the filing cabinet eagerly. The thought was rising to the surface of her mind that she had only invented this theory about the child—no, not entirely invented for surely she had heard it somewhere—but certainly had seized upon it as a reason for ferreting out more facts about Marion. Up to now she could have sworn that she knew everything important that there was to know about Marion; lately this assurance had taken a nasty knock. She had begun to feel that Marion was able to keep a secret from her. Had perhaps always had a secret. “Who’d have thought the old girl capable of it?” she said; she enjoyed talking vulgarly about the unhappy Marion who would certainly never have talked so about her.
What was the secret Marion was keeping? Was it, as she now supposed, the birth of a child all those years ago, when she Joyo hadn’t been around? In search of confirmation she went through the filing cabinet. Her speed was reduced at first by the fascination of what she found. Some of the revelations were sad, too, and Joyo, who had a kind heart except where her own interests were concerned had a little weep over the news that the sickness of the lady next door was not, as she had supposed, due to an unwanted child, but to a tumour.
She found a fat docket on Marion, drew it out with a sucking sigh of pleasure, and sat down behind the desk to read it. A good many of the physical details about Marion did not interest her, although one or two surprised and disconcerted her. “What liars doctors are,” she grumbled. “Why, old Marion is as strong as a horse. Nothing wrong with her.” She paused for a moment at the judgement that Dr. Manning’s health seemed at the moment to be comparatively good, except for headaches for which there was found no organic reason. Stress headaches, was the verdict. “And the stress is me,” muttered Joyo. Then she went searching on. What she wanted to find out was whether Marion had ever given birth. Surely doctors asked that sort of question? She herself had kept away from doctors but she could remember one occasion in London during her war-time career when she had been medically examined. He had certainly asked her this question and she had given him a black, cold stare and not answered. She discouraged personal questions. Still Marion was just the sort to have answered such a question and truthfully, too.
She was still looking for her evidence when she found something that made her suck her breath in and not pleasurably this time. A little bit of paper was clipped to the bottom card.
The address was ominous: High Elms Private Nursing Home for Nervous Gases.
Even Joyo with her restricted opportunities knew what that meant.
Nor was she under any illusion about who was going there and why. While she had been planning to get rid of Marion, Marion had been planning to get rid of her. And in a downright nasty way.
Great tears welled up in Joyo’s eyes. “Beast,” she said. “Traitress. And to think of all I’ve done for her. I hate her now.”
Chapter Six
Inspector Coffin came into the case because of a missing person. Otherwise there was no reason in the world that should bring a detective from south of the river in London to Oxford. He came in search of evidence of his own.
Coffin was a young man for his position as Divisional Detective Inspector even although his Division was small and dingy and unfashionably south of the river. But it was not dingy in his eyes, to him it was a wonderful place full of vigour and entertainment, offering him rich promise for his ambitions; he loved every side street and dirty little alley.
His district had produced one or two original and interesting crimes which had received fair publicity. There was the missing girl from Courcy Street, the Nursery School crime, and already, although Coffin was not to know it yet, there was beginning the stream of events that was to cause the troubled but fascinating crime of The Lottery.
Coffin was a Londoner by birth, from a real old London family, not one of the new ones, come there perhaps from Wales or the Midlands of Scotland in the last generation, but one that had lived in the same district, in much the same way, marrying into the same group of families, since the Great Harry was building in Deptford Dockyard. Such families are as tough, close-knit and localised as village families. They produce people like Coffin: a modern Sam Weller who might have said, in the spirit of his distinguished predecessor, Education: the World; University: Life.
As a detective, Coffin’s assets were two: insatiable curiosity and strong common-sense. His life was complicated by a deep liking for people; cautious, hostile, suspicious as a tom-cat at a first meeting, with him to know was in the end to like.
The same river Thames which ran so greenly not far from the Oxford police station at St. Aldates, also lapped, dark and oily and full of dirt, under
the windows of Coffin’s office in his Division not far from Southwark. Coffin was not thinking of Oxford, but to a certain extent he was under its influence. He was slowly and thoughtfully going through the Catalogue issued with the Teach Yourself Everything Series. (He was doing this in his lunch hour, being a hard-working and conscientious officer.) “Chinese,” he said, turning over a page. “Russian, I’ve tried that but it didn’t do. History, can’t see the point; Gardening, too frivolous; supposing I try Anthropology? Learning about people, bound to be a help to me. Give me something to talk about.” Not that Coffin ever lacked anything to talk about, he was naturally a non-stop talker, but the subjects which came most readily to him, such as Association Football and Crime, were not always the most suited to the varied audiences he had to meet. He studied the information about anthropology.
Reluctantly he put it aside to get on with the work on hand. He had two missing people reported in his district; one was a woman, and the other a man. The woman, he much suspected, was not missing at all. Or at any rate, not in the sense her husband and family feared. He had no doubt whatever that Mrs. Pearl Meadey was happily ensconced in another home somewhere from which one day she might, or might not, communicate with her husband. She might even return to him. Coffin thought he could put a name to her new home, too; it was reported, although not by her family, who seemed completely unsuspicious (“Noddies to a man,” Coffin thought), that she had been seen with Maxie Freak, the little boxer from Red Market; and Coffin knew that it was also said that Maxie had a new girl-friend. No doubt this was Mrs. Meadey, heading for the bright lights. Well, he hoped they suited her, but how, he thought a little sadly, were you to explain to a decent, stupid, worried husband and three small children that mother was away to enjoy herself and would be home if it suited her? No doubt Mr. Meadey would prefer to hear that his wife was in hospital or had lost her memory. Coffin put his problem aside: he would leave it to Mrs. Meadey.
Death Lives Next Door Page 9
